Fiction:
Return to Dust

Return to Dust

by Clare de Lune © 2025

She appears; a wisp of a woman, featherlight and pale, gathered in white cotton sheets. We yawn simultaneously, though she does not sense me. A blade of silver cuts through the glass; its glint needles my binocular eyes and spills across the room. She stretches, shedding the remnants of peaceful sleep, and slips to the edge of the bed, toes grazing the cold timber floor. She does not flinch, though her fragility suggests she might. I ruffle my frosted coat and welcome its stored and pleasurable warmth.

The rumpled bedsheet recalls the swirls of cream frosting she once lavished upon her Sunday cakes. I used to watch from the downstairs window, but that belonged to another season. The linen stirs an older memory. I see it through her half-smile, though her fine fingertips no longer register the weave of cloth as they once did. Numbness has claimed them.

She disapproves of the room’s new order: furniture pressed together like mismatched pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It unsettles her. I survey the space and note instead the symmetry of cardboard boxes flanking the bed frame, stacked with precision. The wardrobe stands bruised and battered by years; the dressing table beside it, its mirror dismantled and propped at a wounded angle against the far wall. She drifts towards it and lifts her hand to the scratches scarring its surface. From within the dim glass, radiant eyes return my gaze, a predator’s gleam. Mine. Eyeshine kindled in the thinning dark, reminding me that it is almost time to rest, as dawn will soon claim the sky. In the mirror, she searches for her own face and finds none. Instead, only the reflection of my pallor answers back.

Waiflike, she glides the perimeter of the room, absorbing it as though encountering it for the first time, seeking small personal relics she knows once rooted her here. The grandfather clock, cloaked in shadow, stares mutely; time at standstill, sad-faced and still. Darkness gathers in the corners, a stark contrast against the ashen spill of moonlight. Plastic shrouds and dust sheets veil the richness that once adorned the space. I remember the candescent tapestry, the sumptuous velvet curtains, the lush glow of electric light. I remember her, younger then, possessed by the creative flow of writing, hunting story ideas deep into the night. That was what first drew my vigilant eyes to this window. She reaches towards a memory just beyond her grasp, then releases it, almost as if along with her unresolved burdens. Her attention shifts. Our eyes meet, and something passes between us – an understanding that reaches far beyond the dark. She lingers in her bardo, yearning for gentler passage, and believes I am her spirit guide.

He enters and switches on the dim apricot lamp. His gaze travels slowly, drawing in the nostalgia of the room, yet he does not see her. This is his third visit this week. I greet him with a low-throated coo; I have known his face since boyhood. He strips back a dust sheet and perches upon the worn arm of the easy chair. He pours himself coffee from a flask into a small, ceramic mug that bears a faded image of an owl and a cat; a relic of childhood verse. He clutches the vessel tight in his hands. He notices the boxes, mementos swaddled in bubble wrap: children’s books, a handmade Mother’s Day card. A tender smile flickers, eclipsed by a sigh, as his fingers smooth the frayed fabric of the chair. I remember him balancing there as a boy, face alight with anticipation while his mother read ghost stories beneath the comfort of the apricot glow.

Then he looks up. She studies him, but he cannot see her. Rising, he presses the photograph to his heart and draws in a long breath, as though to inhale the lifetime of memories stilled etched in this room. They move towards one another in a choreography of farewell. I cannot see her face, yet he looks through the window directly at me, sensing what he cannot name. Birdsong breaks the sombre. He steps through her ghostly form, and dust motes ascend like embers in a stream of sunlight, scattering ethereal light. And she is gone.

It is time for me to withdraw, up to the rafters in the barn where sleep calls. As one life passes, another awakens. The man stands at the musty window, tall and contemplative. His gaze settles upon the garden and comes to rest on a single snowdrop – peaceful and white against winter’s ruin, a promise that life returns after the cold.

The end.